After Claude (14 page)

I went to the mirror and discovered that my face was melting. A towel would have been a luxury, as would a bar of soap, a toothbrush, toothpaste, not to speak of a place to pee other than the crummy basin. Unlike the Empress of Iran, I am not generally accompanied by a portable water closet. With trembling fingertips I arranged my natural gypsy shag to cover as much of my face as it could.

Would you believe it, after forcing myself to dress, I was afraid to open the door and leave the room? I sat on the wooden chair, my hands clenched in front of me, my heart pounding, as if the hall, the stairway, the lobby were steps to the gallows. If only I could think. But how could I think with the inside of my head boiling like a pot of spaghetti?

To appease the monsters below, I confined the tunafish cans, the Nescafé, the Cremora, and the mayonnaise to the rotting refrigerator. I searched for an outlet. A person with an electric can opener can’t be all bad. I’d buy a few pictures, simple rustic scenes, scrub the drapes, sweep up the butts, invest in a cheerful bedspread, paint the chairs hospital white, strip and wax the table, maybe a little round hand-braided rug at the foot of the bed, lots of fragrant, fresh flowers. Mystery Girl Transforms Broomcloset into Cozy Retreat.

A plan was forming. First the pharmacy, buy lots of soap and brushes, orange sticks, toothpaste, pomades, bubble bath, night creams, be a debutante radiant with cleanliness. Who is she? I don’t know, but she’s the cleanest person I’ve ever seen.

I walked to the door, and my guiding angel reminded me to put on my sandals. The corridors with their marble floors and vaulting ceilings were designed to accommodate a state funeral. My steps echoed along the empty tomb, the solitary sound bouncing off the filthy walls. I held my head high as I descended the Napoleonic staircase. The reason for my regal posture, I noticed with a shudder, was a stiffness, a rigidity in fact, from the base of my skull to the back of my heels. Is this, I wondered, the onslaught of spinal meningitis? Is an iron lung, a mirror tilted to reflect the world, my destiny? Who wouldn’t feel a tremor of fear at such a horrible prospect? I felt my legs buckling under me and got to the front desk just in time to grab at it and prevent myself from crumbling into an unconscious mass.

“I am the occupant of 228,” I volunteered. “I guess I ought to register.”

The desk clerk didn’t answer but started running his finger down a large ledger. “Are you Harriet…” he began, but I stopped him. Even under stress, they won’t find me napping.

“No. She merely made the reservation for me.” We both smiled at the silly game we were forced to play. “My name is Stephanie; however,” I signed the register, “if you should happen to get a call or a letter for my friend Harriet, I am the only person in America who knows how to reach her.” He ran his coroner’s finger, gray and bloodless, along the page.

“Your room is paid up until the twenty-second of September.” To complete the comedy, he added, “Is everything satisfactory?”

“It depends,” I said haughtily, “on what you’re satisfying.”

Well, the first hurdle was met. I think there is nothing more reviving for the human spirit than to attack a problem head-on. My spine derigidified. The lobby, like the halls, was immense. If not for the language, I would have sworn I was in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. Keeping my eyes fixed on the revolving door a good quarter of a mile away, I captured in my peripheral vision a collection of longhaired freaks, all fringed and beaded, slumped on red benches, gently caressing guitar cases and amplifiers. I sensed how mortifying it would be to collapse in a mindless heap in the middle of that funk and quickened the tempo. I sailed through the revolving door.

I escaped down Seventh Avenue. It was very pleasant and friendly if you happened to be a native of San Juan. Being I am who I am, I couldn’t read one sign or recognize one fruit or vegetable in the grocery windows. Most disturbing, I couldn’t understand the numerous proposals and tongue cluckings flung at me. Don’t get too far from the hotel, a concerned inner voice guided me. Returning to Twenty-third Street was a bit like getting off the boat. My survival instincts led me to a Horn & Hardart, where there was no nice lady dispensing handfuls of nickels, because, due to a prohibitive investment in plastic flowers and genuine-brick wallpaper, the nickel as legal tender had become as obsolete as beads and stones. The tables were filled with a lot of people drowning their sorrows in glasses of water.

For some reason, as I pushed my tray along the counter of steaming foods, I found myself reminiscing about the meals I had choked down at my mother’s table. My mother, the High Priestess of Duggan’s cupcakes, was famous for never being hungry. She never sat down for a meal, yet weighed in at a mighty two hundred pounds. “I don’t know,” she would say, jabbing a fork into the gray pile of chopped liver on my plate, “I just have no appetite. Is it good?” she’d ask me, as if I lived in her mouth. Good? It was chopped liver, and chopped liver could taste only one way. Her way. My father, across from me, would look up at his wife and in code request a Pepsi-Cola. He was to Pepsi-Cola what she was to Duggan’s cupcakes. She would sigh her way to the icebox and back, watch him empty the bottle, and then race him for the glass. She always won, because not being a juggler, he lost a split second putting the bottle down and reaching for the fix with his right hand.

“Terrible,” she’d say, guzzling his drink down. “I don’t know how you can take this poison.” How we escaped acute malnutrition with this woman doing all our eating for us is a problem I leave to medical science.

“Ma,” I’d say, “sit down and eat.”

“Me eat?” She’d snatch the roll out of my hand and rip it open with her teeth. “Are you crazy? When do I ever eat? If I ate the way you and your father eat, I’d explode.”

“Ethel,” said my enchanting dinner companion, “is there more Pepsi-Cola?”

“Six bottles you’ve drunk today.” She’d give him the countdown, washing my bread down with the few dregs left in the bottom of his glass. “Who can keep up with you? Look,” she’d point dramatically into the kitchen, “I order the poison by the case.’’ And sure enough, stacked in the kitchen was a monument, a pyramid of empty cases.

When my mother was not eating, she kept herself occupied by not sleeping. Each morning, upon opening my eyes, I would discover her face hanging over me, haggard from sixteen hours of not sleeping. “What do you want for dinner tonight?” she’d demand, her voice thick with tension. While the rest of the gluttonous world mindlessly slept, Ethel lay staring into the darkness, pondering what to cook. Needless to say, I’d get whatever slop the institution was serving that day. When she slapped those burned little meatballs in front of me, I knew it was Tuesday, the way Columbus knew those grinning extras were Indians.

I studied the vats of stewing garbage offered by the cafeteria. An emaciated alcoholic, who looked as though the rising steam had dissolved his flesh, waited for me to make a decision.

“You’re holding up the line, miss.” His old voice came drifting out of the vapors, and sure enough, behind me was a snarling mob of tray carriers ready to break into a prison riot. Being normal, it’s not easy for me to make free choices under that kind of pressure. Rather than be lacerated by the forks the inmates had cleverly sharpened into daggers, I panicked and pointed to a pot of bubbling glue, which turned out to be the most inedible of all comestibles, tongue, its tastebuds stiff with rigor mortis. He handed me the plate, and I placed it in the center of my tray and led the parade toward the desserts. I selected a wedge of mincemeat pie, in order to establish my patriotism. She is an American, my tray arrogantly declared, and I flashed a five-dollar bill at the cashier. She smiled at me. I found an empty table near the window.

Not having been trained in cafeteria etiquette, I had neglected to equip myself with eating utensils. When I returned with two forks and a glass of polluted water, I found an intruder seated at my table. In front of him were the following foods: a brownie, chocolate pudding, a scoop of chocolate ice cream, a chocolate eclair, and a slice of devil’s-food cake. I pushed the tongue away from me and concentrated on the mysteries of the mincemeat pie.

“Can’t eat it?” the boy said, gesturing toward my coagulated plate of tongue. I wondered just how I should respond to his seemingly innocuous statement. If I ignored him, he might attack me on the spot. If I answered him, I was on my way to rape and mutilation. The sensible ruse was to charm him out of his ferocious intentions.

“Tongue makes me nauseous,” I frankly replied.

“How come you ordered it?”

“Oh, well.” I laughed. “I forgot about my aversion.”

“I’m hip,” he said. “You gotta keep the line moving.”

“The fact is,” I informed him, “I happen to be an automat inspector.”

“Automat inspector?” He clearly had never met one of us before and was impressed.

“What do you inspect?” he asked politely, clearing his chocolate-lined throat.

“Well, you know, it depends on the complaints we receive. I’m in food.” I gave him a clue.

“Like if the cooking isn’t up to standard?”

“Oh, we don’t care about standards. At least,” I corrected myself, “not in regards to the cooking.”

“Like if the food is bad?”

“You’re getting warm. Listen, I’ll tell you something very few people outside the organization know. Statistically, in one month we are responsible for more ptomaine poisoning than all the canned-soup companies rack up in a year.”

“Wow,” he said.

“If all those poisoned people got together, which of course they can’t, but if their heirs joined forces, I guess,” I threw up my hands, “well, I guess they could just about pick anyone they wanted for President.”

“Ahhh, you’re putting me on,” he said.

“Listen, we try to avoid it,” I loyally defended the company. “That’s my job. I mean, for instance, suppose we get a report that an egg-salad sandwich has been sitting in its glass cage for a year and a half. Now, we don’t want anyone to eat that sandwich; at the same time, it’s a hell of a lot of glass boxes to keep track of.”

“Desserts must be safe.” He mournfully regarded his untouched eclair.

“Ha. If we could drop our desserts on Vietnam, I swear we’d end the war, if, that is, anyone was left to sign the country over to us. Look at my mincemeat pie,” I advised him. “You see those green specks on it?”

“I don’t see green specks.” He stood up abruptly. “I’m late,” he mumbled. He seemed to have misplaced my eyes, and his glance skimmed the top of my head. I had naturally grown quite attached to him. After all, in a manner of speaking, he was the only acquaintance I had in New York.

“Why don’t you. have a cup of coffee? I’ll treat. We get it on the house, you know. I promise, we’ve never had a coffee fatality.”

“I don’t drink coffee, but thanks anyway. Well, happy inspecting.”

“What’s your name?” I called after him, but he vanished out of the picture as if someone had switched channels. It was my first taste of what people mean when they talk about New York being a cold city. Brrr. Why, if I met a food inspector anywhere, in Athens, in Paris, in Prague, I’d listen to him forever.

A bum in Dr. Kildare’s blood-smeared ducks shuffled over and mechanically wiped the table with a cloth that looked as if it had been dipped in extract of smallpox infection.

Out on the street, I searched for the boy. Only then did I realize how intense the attraction had been. Had he expected me to follow him? If only I could find him and tell him that I didn’t understand the mating customs of his generation. Why hadn’t I at least told him where I was staying? These reflections led me back to the door of the hotel, and I entered.

There was a new clerk on duty, this one in complete drag, so I acted dumb and said, “Miss, are there any messages for my friend Harriet?”

“What room?”

“Two twenty-eight.”

She checked an empty box. “Nothing.”

“Did anyone call and not leave a name?”

“Not since I’ve been on duty.”

“Well,” I directed her, “in case anyone calls and doesn’t leave a name, please don’t take the message.”

The elevator filled with people, but not my adorable lost boy. Nor was he leaning on the wall outside my room. Unlocking my door, I prepared myself not to find him in my bed. As usual, my expectation was confirmed. I lay down on the empty bed and remembered all the things I’d forgotten to buy: toothpaste, soap, toothbrush. It was becoming dark in my room. I closed my eyes. It was probably wise of me to have released the boy before he became hopelessly involved. Wouldn’t his youth, initially appealing, ultimately bore me? Was I prepared to educate him to my level?

I lifted myself wearily from the bed and approached the refrigerator. You could get lead poisoning looking at it. I opened a can of tuna fish. By now it was dark. I was missing Flip Wilson. So what. Let the world watch Flip Wilson while I, an exceptional person by almost any standards, died a slow, agonizing death from mercury poisoning. I left the empty tuna-fish can on top of the refrigerator. I lay down. Tomorrow I’d return to the automat, give the boy another chance, rip off a few forks, a spoon, a knife, conduct a meaningful life.

I
WOKE
up fast and scared. My chest felt as though King Kong were curled up on it, taking a nap. It was hot and still in the room. I heard a strange sound and discovered it was me, panting, as if I’d come running out of my sleep carrying this great weight. I was afraid to open my eyes and afraid not to, which somewhat limited my options. I thought if I opened my eyes I would see something horrible, but if I didn’t, the unseen presence, filling me with a hysterical apprehension, would get me anyway. When I discovered I couldn’t open my eyes or, for that matter, my mouth, my decision was made, and I struggled to see, to call out, to move, to lift the lid entrapping me in darkness and silence. Was I asleep, half asleep, or dying? If I could just manage one movement or one word, I would be totally awake’ and saved. A twitch, a blink, would be enough, but even that small gesture took an impossibly gigantic effort. My body had hardened into a stone effigy. My mind, lucid and frantic, demanded that I relax into the paralysis, that to fight it was to die. My only hope was to surrender and float to the top of the darkness. Easier said than done. I lay there defeated and miraculously the evil spell lifted and my eyelids worked. Lucky me, to go through that hell in order to find myself in the dank, soul-eroding atmosphere of the Chelsea. Something was terribly wrong. At first I didn’t allow myself to recognize the symptoms, but how long can you fight reality? The irony. I was having what my own mother had anticipated throughout her married life, to wit, a fatal heart attack.